man
and you will understand each other. Come, answer me, what do you say to
it?"

His persistence irritated the poor girl beyond endurance, and to put
an end to the painful scene, she at last asked: "Would you not like to
look--for the last time--at M. de Chalusse?"

"Ah! yes, certainly--an old friend of thirty years' standing." So saying
he advanced toward the door leading into the death-room, but on reaching
the threshold, he cried in sudden terror: "Oh! no, no, I could not." And
with these words he withdrew or rather he fled from the room down the
stairs.

As long as the General had been there, the magistrate had given no sign
of life. But seated beyond the circle of light cast by the lamps, he
had remained an attentive spectator of the scene, and now that he found
himself once more alone with Mademoiselle Marguerite he came forward,
and leaning against the mantelpiece and looking her full in the face he
exclaimed: "Well, my child?"

The girl trembled like a culprit awaiting sentence of death, and it was
in a hollow voice that she replied: "I understood--"

"What?" insisted the pitiless magistrate.

She raised her beautiful eyes, in which angry tears were still
glittering, and then answered in a voice which quivered with suppressed
passion, "I have fathomed the infamy of those two men who have just left
the house. I understood the insult their apparent generosity conceals.
They had questioned the servants, and had ascertained that two millions
were missing. Ah, the scoundrels! They believe that I have stolen those
millions; and they came to ask me to share the ill-gotten wealth with
them. What an insult! and to think that I am powerless to avenge it! Ah!
the servants' suspicions were nothing in comparison with this. At
least, they did not ask for a share of the booty as the price of their
silence!"

The magistrate shook his head as if this explanation scarcely satisfied
him. "There is something else, there is certainly something else," he
repeated. But the doors were still open, so he closed them carefully,
and then returned to the girl he was so desirous of advising. "I wish
to tell you," he said, "that you have mistaken the motives which induced
these gentlemen to ask for your hand in marriage."

"Do you believe, then, that you have fathomed them?"

"I could almost swear that I had. Didn't you remark a great difference
in their manner? Didn't one of them, the marquis, behave with all
the calmness and co